China’s Slacker Superstar

From America’s Kurt Cobain to China’s Lelush, pop stars earn their adoration not only from performing but from refusing to perform.

When Our Homes Went Miami Vice

As the Reagan era kicked into overdrive, Americans abandoned earthy and organic home decor to turn their residences into cold, sleek totems to upper-class aspiration.

Blue-Collar Jocks

In the 1970s, sports movies were funny, bitter comedies about working-class jocks taking aim at both the front office and the rich.

Labor’s Long March

The question is no longer whether the working class matters, but how it can fight back.

Why Line Cooks Like Me Aren’t Going Back

If an extra $300 a week in unemployment is enough to keep us out of kitchens, it should tell you something about our lives.

My Life as an Amazon Warehouse Worker

I started working at Amazon during the pandemic. I wanted to organize my workplace, but at the end of a long day, everyone just wanted to get home as fast as possible.

We Went to Work. The Next Day, the World Shut Down.

While millions of Americans worked remotely during the COVID pandemic, millions more either showed up to a deadly job site or were thrown into unemployment. What will the recovery be like for them?

How China Avoided a Soviet-Style Collapse

What have three decades of market reforms meant for the world’s largest working class?

Dentists of the World, Unite?

The middle class isn’t going away — and we’re not sure they’ll help us.

The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropist

Robert Tressell was a great writer whose class position meant he died without knowing the appreciation of his work.

The Return of the Company Town

The Second Gilded Age is starting to look more and more like the first.

The Problem Isn’t Classism, It’s Class

Under capitalism, prejudice against workers is common. But it only adds insult to a deeper, more profound injury.

Workers Didn’t Bring Us Fascism

From Berlin to the Ruhr, the organized working class resisted Hitler’s reactionary appeals.

White-Collar Media

For most of the news media, the life and struggles of the majority class just aren’t newsworthy.

The Life of a Worker in Shenzhen

We Built the Golden Age

The culture of British trade union militancy in auto plants like Austin Longbridge wasn’t the “natural” result of a Golden Age of capitalism — it came from organizing.

Lifestyle Environmentalism Will Never Win Over Workers

And those are exactly the people we need to save the planet.

Disorganized Democracy

A coalition of industrial workers and small farmers underpinned democratic politics in the twentieth century. Can workers in a precarious service economy fill their shoes today?

What Is a “Proletarian” Anyway?

With the rise of industrial capitalism and the workers’ movement it created, we created new words to explain a confounding new world.

The Many Farewells to the Working Class

For decades, the parties of labor have been slowly replaced by the parties of the educated. A Left that doesn’t acknowledge this as a problem has already been defeated.